Derica Shields is a writer and editor from South London working across disciplines with a particular focus on Black aesthetics, cultures and epistemologies. Her criticism and essays have appeared in Art Review, Frieze, Flash Art, and Girls Like Us, and in catalogue and gallery publications. She is a former contributing editor at the New Inquiry and LIES journal, and former Features Editor at Rookie.
Over the past several years, she has experimented with schematic writing and orality through commissions from Cell Project Space (2019), Wysing Art Centre (2019) and Turf Projects (2021). Her oral history project A Heavy Nonpresence (Triple Canopy, 2021) brings together seven Black Londoners’ accounts of the British welfare state. Derica recently concluded work on Bad Practice, book that considers the potentials of Black failure, commissioned by Hannah Black forthcoming from Book Works. She is a 2022–2023 resident at Jan Van Eyck Academie.
Art & Spatial Praxis – Video of the launch of the publication of Plot(ting) on April 17th 2024, hosted at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Performances and talks by: meLê yamomo, S*an D. Henry Smith, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Derica Shields, Patricia de Vries, Liza Prins and Maisa Imamović.
Art & Spatial Praxis – The research group Art & Spatial Praxis launched the digital artistic research platform Plot(ting) on April 17th. Hosted at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie with performances and talks by: meLê yamomo, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Derica Shields, Patricia de Vries, Liza Prins and Maisa Imamović and a communal dinner with Lina Bravo Mora and Mayıs Rukel of Radical Roots.
Art & Spatial Praxis – We are delighted to invite you to the launch of the publication of Plot(ting) on April 17th from 14:30 to 19:00, hosted at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Fedlev Building, Room FL101.